What did he do when the one he wanted to be with, and loved in the plainest possible fashion, disappeared from view behind the veil of another relationship? I think he appropriated the principles, emotions, themes, motifs etc from that specific love, and attempted to graft them onto latter loves, half-loves, and even infatuations. Consider how on the first road trip he took with that woman who had fallen for him; why did he have to pack CDs of songs written by a songwriter, an affection for whom he shareed with that ever present veiled absence? Or consider the synonyms of that nickname, which he deploys again and again in the chain of lives he passes through? The more I think of his behavior, more of such transfers surface, including that one of referring to a single physical body with “he” and “I”.

A comment, with minor editing, on this Sepia Mutiny post:

Excellent summary of a f**ked up situation, Siddhartha - very troubling to me personally given that in a few months time this macaca would have to get his sepia self onto airplanes every week. I suppose I will have to ensure that I don't ever do any of the following:

1. Fidget with mobile phones, and exchange plastic bags with other passengers [1]
2. Cheer if a mobile phone or a Blackberry rings at or just after takeoff informing me, for example, that I have just won a million dollar jackpot or France won the World Cup, etc [1]
3. Wear ethnic grab or grow a beard modeled after one of the arrested gentleman [2]
4. Sit in front of or next to one Mr. Nitin Patel of Boston, who like the “Chosen One” thinks with his "gut" [3]
5. Forget English after an attack of amnesia, and revert to language of Faiz Ahmed Faiz or Ghalib, and thus not to fasten my seatbelt when ordered to (in English?) [4]

References: 1)from Swissinfo.org

2)from an 8/25 NYTimes article

3)from a CBS News report: The Algemeen Dagblad newspaper quoted Nitin Patel of Boston, who sat behind the men in business class, as saying, "I don't know how close we were, but my gut tells me these people wanted to hijack the airplane."

4)from a Huston Chronicle article: They described the men as between 25 and 35 years old and speaking Urdu, the language commonly spoken in Pakistan and by many of India's Muslims. Some had beards, and some wore a shalwar kameez, a long shirt and baggy pants commonly worn by South Asian Muslims. A Scottish tourist, Stewart Nichols, said he saw the 12 being handcuffed by three armed air marshals. "I don't think that any of them behaved suspiciously." "They were not fastening seat belts despite being told so by the airline staff," Nichols said.

Mais où sont les neiges d’antan? (Where are the snows of yesteryear?) – Villon

The causes of mourning when a love is done are, perhaps, the possibilities of the future that will never came to fruition, the certainties of the past that have vanished, and a gaping void that is the present. If that love, however, was entirely based on fictions, what does one mourn other than that continuously closing and opening void in time?